BBC Elder Q & A

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I feel so small down here. We had a big laugh in our household this afternoon about when
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I was reading Pilate, and some reason this morning my mind just said pirate. And I have not seen the new
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Pirates movie, but my mind was just on pirates for some reason. So, Pirate Bible Church.
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Just to give you a little discussion about church growth and how churches grow, I will teach the positive by first talking about the negative.
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I was in Santa Cruz and I found this little ad. It's got a picture of a surfboard with the word deliverance on it, and it says a new spin on recovery.
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This is an ad for a church, and it says music, message, and skits. Come experience 12 steps like you've never seen them before.
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We offer upbeat services that won't put you to sleep. Thursday nights, 7 p .m.
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So how do you grow a church? Well, you can have upbeat services. The other one that if you received an email from me this
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Friday, this is not a joke. I got a good email from Bob Bowman about this. This is hymnsandhounds .com,
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a dog friendly church. It's popular due to our meeting place moving and not having enough room for us.
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Services will be on hold till further notice. It says here, would you like to be able to go to church but your pooch pouts because you'd have to leave your faithful companion alone.
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Again, after being gone during the week. Or you just like to enjoy your puppy pals company while you worship.
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Now there is a solution. Come and enjoy a truly special and unique church service.
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I would agree with that. Where you and your canine friend, et cetera, et cetera.
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Services are currently being held on the second Sunday of each month at 4 p .m. Sermon topics relating to humans and their dog will be given by minister and retired professional dog trainer,
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D. Renda. Followed by the yappy hour with refreshments. On the website it also says
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Psalm 150 verse one, let everything that has breath praise the
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Lord. For the safety of all, please make sure your dogs are leashed not all dogs may be as friendly as yours.
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I mean, what do you say to that? You can grow a church any way you'd like to. You can offer people $5 a week if they'll come.
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You could offer them $10 if they'll bring a friend. But how does the Lord's church grow? After all, it is
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Christ's church and he tells us what we should know about how to make that church grow, yes?
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He ordains growth and he ordains the way it should grow. And so if you just take your Bibles to the book of Acts, in the next five minutes or so, we're just going to take a little survey of about 10 statements where God's church grows and it always grows through the same format.
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And that format is the unadulterated, systematic preaching of God's mind.
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Revelation from God, his word is being proclaimed either as it comes to the apostles into their mind directly, or now since we're removed from the apostles, we have the apostolic writings and then we proclaim those writings that perform their work in Christians' lives according to 1
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Thessalonians chapter two, verse 13. And so when I see the survey of church growth, I'm encouraged because there are all kinds of antagonists against the church,
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Satan, the world, demons, ourselves, but God, Christ Jesus builds his church and nothing will stop that.
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And I just reviewed these this afternoon and was very encouraged. Acts 2 .41, if you don't have a
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Bible, I'll just read them. I will not give you context for each because that will take too long.
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But Acts 2 .41, so then those who received his word were baptized and that day were added about 3 ,000 souls.
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They hear the word, God saves them. Verse 47 of the same chapter, praising
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God and having favor with all the people and the Lord was adding, do you notice that? The Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.
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Acts chapter four, verse four, please. And again, we're gonna look at about 10 verses just quickly to remind you that God grows his church in number here and certainly in maturation as well, but focused here more on number.
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Acts 4 .4, but many of those who had heard the message believed, tying in again the word and the number of the men came to be about 5 ,000.
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What a great message that must have been. Chapter five, verse 14, if you will. And all the more believers in the
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Lord, multitudes of men and women were constantly added to their number, added by another.
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This is a passive kind of verb, at least theologically, and someone does that to the church and it is
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God adding to that number. Chapter six, verse 17, as we see again, just a quick tour of these verses where God adds to the church.
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What did I say, 617, there's no such thing. I was just seeing if you were paying attention. Well, I wrote 617 down,
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I wonder what I meant. 6 -7, the word of God kept on spreading and the number of disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith.
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So that would be 6 -7 instead. Chapter nine, verse 31, just a few more. Acts 9 .31,
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so the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria of all places enjoyed peace, being built up and going on in the fear of the
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Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it continued to increase. Acts 12 .24,
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please. Acts 12 .24 says, but the word of the
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Lord continued to grow and to be multiplied. Acts 13 .48
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and 49, very familiar verses to those of you who study the decrees of God and which comes first.
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And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing. Acts 13 .48, and glorifying the word of the
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Lord. They would not understand when people say, oh, you worship the Bible, the Bible and the word of God, the
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Bible, rather the word of God and Christ are here glorifying the word of the
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Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. And the word of the Lord was being spread through the whole region.
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And remember, this is in the time of persecution. It's very, very difficult, yet it still continues. And two more sets of verses,
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Acts 16 .5, Acts 16 .5. So the churches were being strengthened in the faith and were increasing in number daily.
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And then lastly, Acts 19. I'll read a larger section here since it's the last set of verses
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I have. Acts 19 .11, one of my favorite sections of scripture. God was performing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that the handkerchiefs or aprons were even carried from his body to the sick and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out.
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Now that is power, apostolic power. PS, if you ever see handkerchiefs on sale for $50 love gift on TBN, do not send money in because they are just hucksters.
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But also some of the Jewish exorcists who went from place to place attempted to name over those who had the evil spirits, the name of the
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Lord Jesus saying, I adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches. Can you imagine that? Seven sons of one
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Sceva, a Jewish chief priest were doing this. They should have known better. And the evil spirit answered and said to them,
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I recognize Jesus and I know about Paul, but who are you? I would love to have seen their faces.
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And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them. If they weren't scared earlier, they're scared now and subdued all of them and overpowered them so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.
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This became known to all, you bet it did. Both Jews and Greeks who lived in Ephesus and fear fell upon them all and the name of the
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Lord Jesus was being magnified. Many also of those who had believed kept coming, confessing and disclosing their practices.
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When God begins to move on the heart of people, there's repentance. And many of those who practice magic brought their books together and began burning them in the sight of everyone.
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And they counted up the price of them and found it 50 ,000 pieces of silver. So the word of the
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Lord was growing mightily and prevailing. God grows his church. Is there anything wrong with an increase in the number of people as God gives the increase?
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We're quick here to say we want church growth, that's the maturation of people. But did you see his theme here?
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The theme of God adding people to the church? There's certainly nothing wrong with that. When would that be a bad thing though?
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If the gospel is not being clearly presented, people are getting saved from what they don't know unto someone they haven't heard, yes.
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If they're using some kind of hounds and hymns method or something like that, that's right, good. But church growth in and of itself is not bad.
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I want the church to grow in the sense that I would love to see people, my own children, those who aren't saved, some of your children who aren't saved, the visitors that you bring and those of you who attend who are not
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Christians, if God saves you, do I will like that kind of growth? Oh, absolutely. But it is
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God who decides, it is God's plan at his timing according to his reasons.
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And so it is our job as an elder board to do only one thing and that is not add to the church, that is to proclaim the truth that God uses to add people to the church, yes.
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If we shrink down to 50 people or we balloon up to 5 ,000 people, we are not allowed to change our philosophy of ministry and what we believe about the word.
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I mean, I hope we do start shrinking down even more than 50 if we start changing just to keep people or changing because people like to hear a certain kind of message.
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So as you have noticed, if you haven't been looking around lately on Sunday morning, our place is this building, you know, we are the church, but the building that we meet in is jam -packed.
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Last year, one week ago there were 169 people here and last week there were 239 people here.
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So it doesn't take much math to figure out that's a 35 % increase or so roughly. And so we as elders want to be good stewards that if we don't change the gospel message and God is bringing more people here that are either new
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Christians or they have had to leave their own church for biblical reasons, i .e.
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they're not preaching the Bible, et cetera, then we want to make sure we can accommodate the people who come. We want everybody who wants to hear the word expositionally preached to be able to come here, yes?
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And we want the church building to accommodate that. So we've really been thinking as a church eldership board and we had the deacons in on Thursday, what do we do about this building because we're slowly outgrowing the building?
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So we've examined all kinds of things, the parking lot, two services, new real estate, do you buy a different church?
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Do you rent a Seventh -day Adventist church? Do you buy the price chopper and turn it into a church building?
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What do we do? And we now as an elder board are convinced that wherever the Lord will lead us, we will go.
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We don't have anything in mind in particular in terms of buying land because we don't have any money.
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But other than that, but God owns a lot of money. But we just wanted to make the announcement tonight that dear church, we want you to be ready as the
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Lord will open and close doors and will give us money or not give us money that we're going to have to be prepared to have people, especially in two weeks, right?
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This week is still vacation. I can think of a bunch of families who weren't here this Sunday. Next week is the three -day weekend, but the weekend after that, the college students will be back.
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Everybody else will be back. And what do we do with such a building? I'm thankful that we have a building.
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I'm thankful that the Lord has given us a place where we don't have to meet in some kind of Moose Lodge or Elks Retreat, where did we used to meet?
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Masonic, yeah, how do you explain that to your friends? We're meeting in the Masonic Lodge. And so we wanna just say, we are not going to change our philosophy of ministry, but we are going to have to let the congregation know something is gonna have to happen because if we keep going like this,
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I mean, we're one sermon away from 50 people leaving the church, right? That's always a possibility.
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But if we continue to have 35 % growth, what in fact are we going to do?
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And we want you all to be ready for whatever decisions the elders with the deacon's input and the congregation's input would necessitate.
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So without any further ado, we do have some ideas. Steve or Dave, you wanna give the congregation kind of an idea of what we're thinking, some proactive steps and how they could be involved before I just go in a monologue.
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I'll hit it a couple, I'll hit a couple. We talked about, of course, that in order to stay in this building, we'd need more seating capacity.
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And there's a lot of homework that needs to be done as far as what is the capacity that we can actually have in here, inside the building.
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There's the idea of the parking lot as far as we've asked the deacons to take a look at the plot plan of the parking lot and to stripe it out to figure out a way, how could we best and most efficiently use the parking lot?
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Because that is the, we can get seats in here, but we can't get cars in the parking lot. That's usually, that's going to be our first bottleneck.
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Other ideas that we've had, we could use the building from Sunday evening all the way through Saturday for everything that we do, like for Awana, the different studies that go on in the building.
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But on Sunday morning, possibly rent out another building for just the Sunday morning, because that's where we have the biggest influx in the folks coming, attending.
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Another idea that we looked at, we kind of walked it out on Thursday, would be in, some of you have already heard this, is to flip the sanctuary.
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I'll call this room the sanctuary. And that would be that where Brian is behind you up there, that little extension there would be extended a little bit further.
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And Mike would, or whoever would be preaching from up there. The chairs would be turned around.
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Where we're sitting here would be chairs, and on the stage would be chairs. And up in the choir loft would be chairs for a seating capacity.
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And we would need to relocate the sound booth, the sound equipment. Of course, all of this needs to be checked out.
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We've got to just do the proper and necessary homework for safety, for fire code, and what makes sense for us, and what we, and of course, if we did something like that, we'd want to do it with expense, trying to keep the expenses down.
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Of course, outright sell the building. A possibility, if we could take and put the building on the market and see what we would get for it, and then look for a piece of land to build upon, or a place like Mike had said, where there's a building that we could gut and renovate, and that would suit us.
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There's a lot of different options, but the most important thing for us to do is not to hurry, to do the right thing, to pray about it, to seek the
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Lord in it, and to be praying as a body so that we do the right thing, and we don't overextend ourselves.
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But I agree when all of us have talked about this, that what a tremendous problem to have, really.
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It's a good problem to be able to be in New England, preaching the word of God, teaching it as it is, and not watering it, not cutting the corners, not clipping the message.
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The Lord Jesus never trimmed his message to meet the people.
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He was always clipping away at the people, trimming them and working on men's hearts through his word, and praise
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God, he's allowed us to be here to be able to do just that, to teach the word, to be faithful to the entrustment that we've had, and be good stewards of the gospel, and then see something.
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We pray for God to do something wonderful, to surprise us, to perform that which,
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I think Jeremiah put it this way, in Jeremiah 33, three,
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I think it is, call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.
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Things which we've not seen, and of course, in Ephesians chapter three, that God is able to do, exceeding abundantly above all that we could ask or think, and we're seeing it before our eyes.
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If you're having a hard time sitting, finding a seat, and I know I stood up in the back just this morning just to see what it was like, and the ushers were scrambling at times to find a place for someone to sit, but it's a wonderful problem to have, and it's really all to the glory of God's mighty hand on our behalf.
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I don't know, Steve, or if anybody else has another alternative that we thought of? Yeah, one of the other things we talked about was if things go as we foresee them going, and we have difficulties here in a couple of weeks, that if that continues, and we don't chase them away somehow, that what we would look to do by the first of November is locate a commercial real estate agent and put this piece of property on the market for sale.
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Now, that doesn't mean that on the first of November it goes up for sale, the second of November we get an offer, and we're left without any place to go.
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The game plan would be that we would very carefully consider our options concerning selling it, and also have the real estate agent looking for a place that we could buy.
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So, I mean, it could be that we could have to rent a place for a while, but whatever we do, we're going to have a plan in place so that we're not left wandering the wilderness for 40 years.
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So, we... Basically, and just to kind of summarize what we've all said here, but we haven't really gotten right down to it, as most of you know, because of the regulations concerning this piece of property we're pretty much maxed out.
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There really isn't a whole lot that we can do. We can't add, for example, let's say we wanted to run, build some additional seating up here, and even if we could get it past the fire code, we could have no additional bathrooms because we're maxed out in terms of what they will allow us to do for septic.
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There are a lot of restrictions on this property. We can't really expand the parking lot.
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There are a lot of issues. So, you come to a point where you just go, well, if we continue to grow, we have to find a place to go, and that's what we're going to look into, whether that's renovating a
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Kmart or whatever it is. We have to start looking, and we need somebody, a real estate agent, to start considering what our options would be.
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I think this would be a good time to say this. If any of you have about $2 million in the bank, and you've been waiting for a strategic time to give to the church, now would be that time.
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We don't know what the building's worth. Scott says the assessor believes it's worth about a million, the property and the building.
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And so, it cannot be sold except to another nonprofit or church. And so, we don't even know if anybody would come by and buy it in the next three years or not.
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But we certainly can't buy a $1 .5 million piece of property with the 45 ,000 we have in the bank now.
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And so, if somebody gives us an offer, we don't have to sign the papers, but we can, if it takes us three years to sell the church, it might be a good time to start now is what we're thinking.
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And so, whether that is, some of the deacons said, well, what about moving to Auburn? Some have said, what about the 290 and the 140?
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Steve and Scott Goddard went to look at some property there. We don't really know where we're going to go, but it needs to be someplace centrally located because we have some driving from Gardner and some driving from, where's
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Pat Gordon? Putnam. Putnam. Connecticut. Connecticut. And Dave, you drive from Connecticut too.
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I keep telling them we should go to Lemonster right up there on the, look at this. But wherever we go, we just want to be open to that.
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And yeah, that's right. So, we don't really know where to go and we want to make sure we're wise.
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We're going to do a few other things. We're going to mark out the parking lot with yellow paint so we'll actually have slots because now we kind of all just park every which way.
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I've asked Bob Ulo and Scott Goddard to see if we can put more crushed stone out in the back. You say, well, why can't we go to two services?
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That two service problem is not alleviated by one main thing and that is the parking lot.
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It also creates kind of two different church structures. Typically, church growth people say this, when the sanctuary is 80 % full, start another service.
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And we've done that once here. How many people were here when we went to two services? Keeping your hands up, how many people liked it when we went to two?
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Okay, I mean, will we say we'll never do it? No, but we might have to go to the
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West Boylston Movie Theater. We'll meet there on Sunday mornings to get the 350 or 400 people in instead of going to two services type of thing.
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We don't really know exactly what we want to do, but we want you to be ready to do a few things. Number one, pray that the
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Lord would direct us into a piece of property that we could afford. Just because that piece of property is 1 .5
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million, it doesn't mean that we have to have 1 .5 million to do it. Either God can give us the money or those people can lower their prices down.
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Some churches have given their property away because they've been an old faithful church that has died up and they're just looking to give it away to an evangelical organization.
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We've talked about planting another church someplace. Do we take about 25 or 30 of you with a pastor and plant a church?
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We've discussed that as well. I don't think we'll do that right away, but everything's out on the table and we're going to need you to help us.
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We're gonna probably need six men on a Sunday. Ladies can help too if they'd like. You can have like orange construction things on helping for parking.
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We may, we could do first in, first out parking. Maybe we can, you know, double park, all kinds of things. We want to make sure that nobody drives in here and says,
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I'd really like to come be fed the word of God, but I can't find a parking place. And so if this place cannot help us, then we want to look elsewhere.
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Another illustration of how flexible we'd like to be is what if we can keep this building, but the
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Lord gives us another building too. And so it's a Iwana high school ministry, homeschool ministry and a church school here.
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And then we have our worship services at another place in administrative offices or something. Whatever the
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Lord would like to do, but something's gonna have to give and we need to make some decisions quickly or else we're going to be turning people away.
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220 seats can sit here. I think we have about 220 now. We could put 34 on the stage without breaking fire code and we could put about 50 up in the balcony without breaking fire code.
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So we can have about 80 more people in here than we did this morning. And then after that, we're done.
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If you take 35 % growth to the 250 that we now have attending even in the summer, what does that come out to be,
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Nate? 320 something. About 75 more. Yeah. And so we run into many problems.
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And again, it is a great problem to have. It is great to see God, whether that's in New England or in Somalia, when you preach the word, people respond.
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And so we just wanna be flexible. We wanna let you know what we're thinking. Sometimes people have said, well, the elders don't communicate what's going on.
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We really never say to ourselves, we're four tight -knit people. We're tight -knit guys and we don't talk to people and it's for us to know and you to find out.
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We really, we never have those kinds of meetings. But maybe just by not having times like this, you may think that's what we do.
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And so we wanna make sure we're just very open. Many of you have poured your life into this building. Chuck Strong, Fred Thiebaud, Charlie was up on those rafters
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I heard without a safety belt for many years, or many months. Many years.
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I explained. Okay. Pirate Bible Church. And so as the
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Lord has given us this building, if it will no longer accommodate us, then we'll look elsewhere.
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But as we put it up on the market in November, if we keep growing, that does not mean we have to sell it. That does not mean it's over here.
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That does not mean the first buyer who comes, we have to take the money. And so we wanna make sure you don't think we're gonna be walking around in transit not knowing what to do.
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The new homeschool co -op on Mondays, and Cheryl's thinking, well, what am I going to do? That will all be found out because we can determine escrow times.
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It's gonna have to be another church who buys this place anyway, most likely, because it is zoned residential and you can't have some kind of manufacturing plant in here.
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So it's gonna have to be God's perfect timing. We've talked about, do we sell it to a non -Christian church?
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If the Buddhists wanna buy it, do we sell it to the Buddhists? Do we sell it to Hindu organization? What would we do?
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And so we've tried to think through the general outline, but not the specific details. So unless Lewis has anything, maybe he can answer the first couple of questions.
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Do you congregation have any concerns? Do you have any questions? Would you like to offer any input?
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Now would be a good time to do that. You can just come right up to the microphone or you can just stand where you are and I'll repeat the question.
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Yes, Bruce. Yes, the Bruce behind you. Okay, good question,
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Bruce. To repeat the question for the congregation, could we increase the size of the septic so we could increase the restroom size?
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And if I remember Scott Goddard correctly, the answer to that is no, we are maxed on the septic system.
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To see if we could fill up the soil in the existing, don't seem promising, but that engineering hasn't been explored to its fullest.
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We do want a bridge that stays up though. I'm sorry, could you finish that sentence
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Bruce? Because you have good wisdom in these areas and I didn't want to lose that thought. Yes, okay, thank you.
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That's right, very good, thank you. Congregation, thank you a million. Well, right now through the summer, our giving has been about $100 a week over what we budgeted, which at $7 ,500 a month approximately, that's pretty good giving over the summer.
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And so, as I used to say to the congregation, the good news is when I got here, nobody was a huge giver.
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That is to say, nobody had millions and millions of dollars who could say, Mike, if you need a million, you just let me know.
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And as a new pastor, I think it was the Lord's mercy in not having me have to deal with someone like that because what if I preached against something that person didn't like and they withheld the million dollars in giving.
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And so, the good news is we didn't have somebody who had millions to give. The bad news is we didn't have someone who could give millions.
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And so, I think we as a congregation give well, mature Christians give, they give sacrificially.
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That will only increase. Our fixed costs remain the same. We'd have to talk about maybe adding another pastoral staff person as time goes on, but we don't have enough money, even with 150 ,000 coming from the state to put down a huge down payment to buy another piece of land, let alone land in the building, unless we have this asset, the church and this land to be able to buy the other one.
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Unless we wanna do short term, we meet down at West Boylston Movie Theater on Sunday morning, Theater 3 for worship services and we fit 400 people in there.
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Many have done that. Many have gone to, let's say, West Boylston High School and you have the amphitheater there that holds 350 with the seats are there.
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We just bring in the sound system and the congregation, we meet there on Sundays, but we still have Awana here on Wednesdays.
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And there's lots of other things we could do. And we'll try to do something like that before going to two services because it really is not very healthy for the church to have the two services.
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The older people tend to come to the first service because they don't have kids to get ready and the families come to the second service. You just don't get to do the one another's as well.
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And so it's just not the best. I'm willing to do it, but I really don't want to. Okay, other questions?
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Yes. Oh, Frank, that's a good point.
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What I would say is this is probably what we should all be ready for in the short term. Let's see what happens
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September 10th and two Sundays. How many people show up? Please congregation, if you see a family of four who are visitors and you have your spots all lined up that you quickly reserve because you were obedient to God's will and came for Sunday school and you were there.
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That's a good motivation to come to Sunday school. We can't get seats unless we do. If you've got extra seats and you see that family, would you please give those up and we can set you on the metal chairs.
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We really want to show that we love other people. And one of the ways we show love is when it costs us.
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And so moving around and sitting certain places, please be ready to do that because we would not want to have people to come and say,
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I really want to hear God's word. We had a visitor who sat right back here this morning. His name was Emil and he used to attend
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Dan Rathbun's father's church in Lowell. And so it was really neat to talk to him. And he said,
32:31
I'm really glad the church is friendly. He had cookies and many of you were talking to him and his daughter, thank you for that.
32:38
But he was mature and he said, if nobody's friendly at the church, but I get fed the word of God, that's the kind of church
32:44
I go to. But remember, we deal with people who aren't always that mature and they only come to churches because, well,
32:50
I get the word of God, but I get friends and nice people and I'm lonely all week and I need support.
32:57
Those kinds of people we minister to as well and we're called to minister to. And so for the weak ones who come and would say,
33:04
I'm never coming back because I can't find a seat. Please get up and give your seats to those folks.
33:09
Maybe we need to have the dads quick get up and get the kids moved over. Maybe for those of you kids who are dismissed for junior church, maybe you could sit on your mom and dad's laps before junior church is dismissed.
33:23
There's lots of things we could do. To Bruce's point, I think what we'll see quickly is Scott Goddard and a crew, for those of you who are fairly new to the church and want to serve,
33:32
Scott could probably use your help with the parking lot. Then we have a parking lot crew of men serving that will have the yellow lines there so we can park in there, that will look at extending that little pulpit up there.
33:44
I'm gonna feel like Spurgeon preaching up there. We'll have to figure out lights and sound room. The stage area is easy because we can just put 30 chairs up there.
33:54
We might have to invest a little money building the choir loft with rising seats so people could sit and see down.
34:02
If you stand up there, you can see the pulpit pretty easily. And so that could all happen pretty quickly without much money being spent because if we're going to move, then why put a bunch more money into the plant now?
34:14
But I think that could happen pretty fast being flipped around. I don't know what to do to acoustics, but that's Charlie's forte.
34:21
Baptisms at night. Baptisms would be at nighttime and we would just have them here. We'd flip the sanctuary around again.
34:27
The baptisms would be here in the baptismal. Yes, Mark. I think that'd be a good idea.
34:56
So if the ushers could take note of that, we could have a little ropes, little, what do they have, the kind of little rope deals.
35:03
Yeah, reserved. I think you'll start seeing some visitor parking sections out there. So we'll keep those things to the very last minute.
35:11
At 1030, we'll fill them up with people of our own membership. But until then, you'll say visitor.
35:17
We'd like you to honor that. But that's a good point, Mark. We could, the way the risers are, they're only standing risers.
35:33
So you could sit to the front and kind of lean over a little bit. I like it that we have a choir loft. In the old
35:38
Puritan churches, the choir loft was in the back of the church because, you know, I've seen choirs at Grace Church and it was neat.
35:45
There was 300 people and I'd say, oh, she got a new haircut today and oh, that guy's robe's too tight and just things that I think about that I don't wanna think about.
35:54
But if I don't wanna think about them and I do, then everybody else does too. Maybe I shouldn't have told you because now you'll think about it.
36:02
But it would be nice to have a choir in the back singing to help with congregational singing.
36:09
It will also make it easier if I'm preaching from that end to have the people sitting there because if you're listening to me preach and then there's somebody up in the balcony who's had a long night and they're falling asleep or whatever it might be, we wanna be careful.
36:24
But we can put people up there right now if we'd like. That's right.
36:30
If I preach too long and they fall down, we'll have to remember that I'm not an apostle for recitation.
36:35
Charlie, or is it, Charlie first and then Doug. Just sort of in case, probably need something that can.
37:12
What if we just have them on Sunday night? Well, the problem is if you put a privacy wall up there so that people feel comfortable sitting elevated.
37:21
Oh, you mean even on the stage? Yeah. Okay. I mean, picture a woman in a skirt sitting elevated in the stage right now.
37:27
You typically put privacy walls so that people just don't feel like they're on display. But that would obscure the baptismal.
37:35
So it's gonna have to be modular sort of. What about the remote work? Yeah, absolutely.
37:41
I just mentioned it as a practical thing. Doug. What about in the short term?
37:48
We have a couple large rooms. Is it possible to televise it and put the, you know, run a closed circuit
37:56
TV to the back to the upstairs room where you could probably see another 30 or 40 or something like that?
38:03
Yeah, that's certainly possible technically. There's not a problem there. The problem you run into with every solution like that is the parking lot.
38:13
That's always the elephant in the room is that there's still a limitation on how many cars you can get in the parking lot.
38:21
And even with striping and all the rest of it. And we've talked about ideas like we might actually park cars just right up against each other and, you know, you just have to wait until the folks that got in after you left.
38:36
It's sort of a last in first out type of situation. But that's going to affect anything we do in this.
38:43
The bottom line is sooner or later, we've got to move off this piece of property because we just can't expand here.
39:03
That's a very good point. We've talked about having shuttle systems. There is the
39:08
Catholic Cemetery across the street. Maybe we could pay to park there. There's Lancaster Meadows. Maybe we all go down to Nancy Chang's Choi Lee's and we have some van and it goes down there and picks people up.
39:19
We've talked about if I get here at 8 .30 and Kim gets here at nine, then we all just get here at nine o 'clock and we could save four or five cars because people drive two cars.
39:29
And so we would try to discourage that. We've got issues about walking across the 110, but still we could have some kind of shuttle.
39:36
And I think Lewis's point though is, sooner or later, something's going to have to give.
39:42
Now again, church membership goes like this up and down, but it's tending to go up. And so sooner or later, we're going to have to do something and we just want to be ready and make sure you, the congregation, know that we want you to be ready too.
39:54
But those are two good points. I would imagine that as long as we own it, we would get the sale of the property and then we would have to sell less.
40:17
If we sold that, if we sold this property... We'd probably close the deal on that money then.
40:26
We'd lose the deal on that money? Yeah. So I would hate to do that, but I don't think we're going to sell this anytime soon because we have to do a lot of things to get ready.
40:37
One we thought was if we hire a real estate agent to say, look for this kind of building, then also look for other people, since you're in the business, who might want to buy this one.
40:46
And as Bruce said, they kind of bridge the gap between the two. Okay, John?
40:54
Yeah, you kind of came around to my question. So what do you do with some of the church group that may or may not even want to see here, say a
41:02
Buddhist or some other kind of church? What's your theology on that? We sell. Business is business.
41:12
And money is good. Bill? Yes.
41:38
Yeah, we're not looking at this, we don't have a five -year plan per se, a 10 -year plan per se.
41:44
I mean, if we did, I imagine when Mike got here nine years ago, if they put in a 10 -year plan, that baby'd be dead about three times over.
41:53
Because things change too much. We could, for example, in the next year, we could see double the growth that we've had before.
42:01
So then what happens to your plan? Or growth could flatline. What we want to do as an elder board and what we want the church to be open to is a certain amount of flexibility, knowing that our circumstances could change, knowing that we have to be ready to move.
42:21
For example, we could list on November 1st, could have a buyer, could find a better piece of property somewhere else for a less amount of money.
42:30
I mean, a lot of different things are possible. Another church could, we've contacted churches before about possibly wanting to sell their building and we haven't received too many replies, but it's possible that when that contact comes from a commercial real estate agent, that now they might go, well, you know what, maybe it really is time for us to sell.
42:53
So there are a multiple number of things that could happen and we don't have, to get back to your question, we're just looking at listing probably in November unless things change substantially.
43:04
I mean, we could get so overwhelmed on September 10th that we just go, let's list it now.
43:11
We probably wouldn't do that, but we just want to be forward -looking, keep our options open and kind of take it as it comes.
43:20
But we're definitely looking at it. The problem with this piece of property is locked in space -wise, expansion -wise.
43:29
I think Scott, in some of my conversations with him, has even indicated that we could find out that the septic system is actually more than, it's bigger than anything we could replace it with because they might want to downgrade it or whatever if we start testing too much.
43:46
So we're basically hemmed in. And if we want to grow, we're going to have to move.
43:54
Bill, just to let you know that when we are going to try to find a new building, what churches typically do is they'll say, let's construct the church in such a way that you can serve in a worship service 400 people, but the back wall can be moved forward and back because we'd hate to have a place that can seat 1 ,000 and there's only 240 of us.
44:16
And it just seems, and I know it's not scriptural or spiritual, but when the church is full on Sunday and we're all singing a cappella and we're worshiping together, it just is a better feel.
44:26
And I know I'm not using proper theological terms, but it's just better to have the size commensurate with how many people are there.
44:34
So we would have to set it up in such a way that if we doubled quickly that we could just move that back expanding wall out.
44:41
So that's something we want to look for, something big enough that we could grow or have a parking lot that was big enough.
44:47
So if you had 800 people that only could fit 400, you could have two services a lot easier. Right now, we can't add to this building.
44:54
We can't add to the footprint of the parking lot with paved asphalt. You could go through something permeable like the back kind of lot out there that's a crushed stone.
45:05
We can do that out farther, we think. But the footprint of the parking lot, the footprint of the building, we are locked in.
45:12
So we can't go any farther. Yes, Ron.
45:19
Excuse me, I have two things. Did you say that you could not sell to a real estate firm or doctor's office or something like that?
45:31
Some of these real estate people, they would love to buy a place like this or maybe some doctor setting up a work.
45:38
Good question. And I only say that because that was one of my questions too. But no, we can't do that because this place is originally zoned for residential and we only get the waiver because we're a church.
45:53
And so another group, a medical group or something that was run for profit, we would not be able, they would not be able to keep this same structure.
46:01
Ron, follow up. Yeah, blacks would like to build steel.
46:12
I have nothing to do with them. Like you said, you can extend it.
46:25
You know, if you grow, you can knock it and extend that. Yeah, so about steel buildings, if we,
46:35
I mean, for example, if we were to get that piece of property that Scott and I went and looked at, a steel building might be something that we would look at.
46:41
The only issue is for this piece of property, a steel building is really of no benefit because we'd have to knock this building down first and then get the approval and they probably wouldn't approve it.
46:53
So, but if we got another piece of property, a steel building would be a possibility. We used to worship in Mansfield years ago and we had a small church building, had the steeple and everything.
47:06
And we outgrew that, so we put that on the market and a young rich couple bought it.
47:14
So if this is residential, somebody with money could buy this and turn it into a building. Well, you never know what might happen,
47:22
Ron. That's a good point. And if it was zoned residential, that might happen and they could come, you know, they'd have line tag here with the
47:28
Iwana circles and everything. Scott Goddard has determined that if a real estate agent wants to, a real estate developer wants to buy the building, knock it down and then have some buildable lots here, it would only yield about three or four lots.
47:42
Let's see on the far side, five. So that's not enough for them to make any money. So that wouldn't be an option, but somebody could buy it and want to live in it.
47:50
Can you imagine? I've lived in this building for most of my life, the last nine years, so yes.
48:19
And I think a real estate agent would know some of those things and they could help us. And that's why, yeah.
48:26
Maybe there's some kind of nonprofit, it would seem profit to us, but nonprofit technically, and they could waive that with some doctor's group that ministered, you know, that served the poor, or who knows what they could do.
48:37
But the great news as far as I'm concerned, we preach that God of sovereignty rules overall.
48:43
And if he continues to give us the increase, he certainly will give us a place that we can minister to those people.
48:48
We want to be forthcoming with the information that we have, because you will help us in lots of ways, with parking lot, with real estate agents, with being on the real estate search committee, a variety of those things.
49:00
And so I know the Lord will take care of us. I just don't know what he's going to do. But in several years, we'll look back and say, isn't that amazing that that other church was given to us?
49:09
We got to keep this building for such and such. I mean, he could do whatever he wants. We do have visions and goals for the church in terms of getting back to Bill's point.
49:18
I would love to have a Christian school. I would love to have a Christian Bible college. I would love to have a
49:23
Christian seminary. Some of those things maybe the Lord will not allow us to have, but I would love to have some of those.
49:29
And we can't do that with this piece of property, but maybe with some of the other ones we could. And we'll just ask the
49:37
Lord to provide for our needs. And maybe the new name for the search committee should be
49:44
Ebenezer Search Committee, that the Lord has helped us thus far, and he will continue to do that.
49:50
Okay, yes, Chris, Scott.
49:59
You can approach the zoning law and change the zoning. And I don't know,
50:05
I can't know the answer to that. In that same note, there's a school zone, so there could be some people sitting in the school.
50:37
Well, we have sent letters to First Baptist of Worcester right there by WPI and said, we're growing out of our church.
50:43
Would you consider giving us your church? So we've asked questions like that. And if we could get another church for free, it'd be nice to be able to keep this one, wouldn't it?
50:51
And have a church school here. I don't know how I could pull it all off, but wouldn't it be great to have a private
50:59
Christian school here where we control the doctrine, we hire the teachers, we tell the homeschoolers, you bring your homeschool kids in at this time for these classes and kind of work this cooperative together.
51:10
I would love to do something like that. And maybe that will be soon.
51:20
Okay, any other questions? Somebody was gonna ask about Melchizedek tonight, but we might not get to that, we'll just see.
51:27
Other questions about growth, our ideas, our concerns. Some of you may be thinking,
51:33
I don't know what this is going to mean. I don't want you to be anxious. The Lord knows best. And we don't wanna jump into anything.
51:40
For those of you that don't know, the church's polity is elder leadership, but we don't wanna run around saying, well, we're gonna make a decision.
51:46
We don't care what anybody else says, whether that's selling the land. I think it was the goodness of God that we said to you as a congregation, we'd like to sell it, what do you think?
51:56
And someone, I can't remember who it was, Barry or somebody said, you should go back and ask for more money.
52:03
They went too low at 145 ,000. So we did what you, the congregation said, we went back and now they still haven't paid us 155 ,000, but it was 155 instead of 145.
52:14
First Peter chapter five makes it clear that we are not to lord over you. This is not our church as an elder board.
52:21
This is our church as a congregation and it is our duty to be good stewards.
52:27
And we want to include you because I've already got more input in from you that I didn't know before.
52:34
Yes, other questions? Yes, Louise.
52:47
Charlie, I think had told us when he did a concert there or Elaine did that they were financially troubled and so we just thought we would give it a shot because it seems so, what a nice area.
52:59
They don't preach the gospel there now and sometimes I drive by churches and I say, Lord, if you give us that building by the strength of your spirit, we'll preach the
53:07
Bible there. And so I thought, well, wouldn't that work out really well if we could go to a church like that?
53:13
Years ago, I wrote to Burncote Baptist because they only had a small amount of people coming. The problem is for our church, we pretty much pay bills week by week because of the people's giving.
53:23
These old churches like the West Boylston Congregational Church, they have so many endowments. The church has paid off free and clear 25 years ago.
53:30
Someone dies, a million dollars go to the church. So they have tons of money, yet it's a spiritually less than...
53:38
I'm just trying to, you know, when is Abendroth ever politically correct? I was just trying to be politically correct. It's spiritually dead.
53:46
I would not recommend anyone going there. And so would you give us that building, Lord, but they would have no reason financially to do it.
53:53
So that's why we had heard through Charlie that they were struggling a little bit financially. I think it's kind of exciting to think about.
54:04
Kim and I moved out here nine years ago and with the elders here, my job is to preach the word.
54:12
That's my job. Sunday morning, Sunday night, when you get up, you preach the word. Weddings, you preach the word and people grow.
54:19
First Thessalonians 2 .13 is true. The word of God performs its work in those who believe and we grow and then you go evangelize.
54:25
And all of a sudden now, how many people, Bruce, are coming out on Saturdays? And some come out on Tuesdays.
54:37
And so I've just been encouraged by the congregation and now we have more people than what we know what to do with them.
54:44
And so now we have to ask the Lord, please help us whether that's here or someplace else. Yes, Doug.
54:53
At one point, we were at a church where they did put the church on the market and so on.
55:00
One of the things I would at least suggest is that as you find out things, please announce them to everyone because one of the issues that happened there was a real estate agent would bring in someone and things would be overheard and then in the church itself, it caused a lot of issues because people were like, well, wait, they've got an offer or this or, it just kind of snowballed just because there was no communication almost on a weekly basis of, okay, this is what we know right now.
55:36
And so there's an opportunity there for things to get a little bit, make it a little bit worse.
55:43
So just. No, I think that's great advice and that's why we brought the deacons in on Thursday and we want to have this meeting tonight, which is, it's not the annual meeting, it's kind of an odd, you know, we're not gonna be preaching but we wanna talk about this just because of that reason.
55:57
It was actually Charlie's idea to put up the for sale sign on Thursday night so when the congregation pulled up on Sunday morning, they would get the idea.
56:05
No, that's not true. And so we would really want to do that and before we sold, we would have a congregational meeting where we can, again, in our congregational meetings, much different than other ones, it's a worship service, we're kind, we don't slander, but we wanna find out from what the church is thinking because we can, at the end of the day, maybe it's still not the best to do what the majority thinks but most of the time it is and so I will try to take that counsel to heart.
56:34
We want to tell you what we're doing because there are no secrets at all. Yes, Andrew? I don't know if maybe
56:40
Scott would be able to,
56:58
I mean, if we're able to sell that off and then we would still have this, why would we sell this and then have to nix that deal and then lose that?
57:12
Well, I think the pending sale of the property to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which has been pending for,
57:20
I think it was pending since I've been here, that would be taken into account under the sales price of the property.
57:28
So, I mean, if we were able to inflate that a little bit to cover that, I think that's what we'd do.
57:34
So, I don't really think that, we're not gonna just lose out on the $155 ,000.
57:42
So, that'll be factored in one way or the other. But I mean, since we've already done the legwork on it.
57:53
Well, the question though is, what do we want to make doing anything contingent upon the
58:00
Commonwealth and we could be waiting how many more years for them? I mean, basically from what we understand, the checks on somebody's desk and just needs, but it's been there for months.
58:11
So, I just don't think we want to be hostage to any kind of situation like that.
58:17
Well, sure, but I don't understand why. They're not linked together.
58:27
It's one piece of property. Yeah. We have a site plan. It's one piece.
58:33
By a registered land surveyor that shows if this property, any value that, so that's where it acts.
59:03
So, there may be a merit to, what I think what Andrew is suggesting is formally subdivide those two things out.
59:13
And hold the subdivision. Unless it was in fact where it wasn't 155.
59:23
Well, I guess we'd have to see and we'll just handle that when the time comes.
59:29
First, we have to get an offer on the property. As we discuss things, maybe we can kind of wrap this up a little bit and we'll just sing one more song.
59:36
The only thing that we can think of now that we're gonna have to spend money, the only outlay of cash besides maybe lengthening the pulpit area, the new pulpit area, the risers up in the choir loft is if the property needs to be assessed by a real commercial real estate assessor and that could run anywhere from two to 4 ,000.
01:00:00
But if you're gonna have to sell, then you're gonna have to sell and we just would have to get that done. So if something happens in three months where the church shrinks in half, then we're still not forced to do anything and we would still have that real estate appraisal in case in hand.
01:00:16
So we're not looking at a lot of money here initially. And maybe you should keep your eyes out for future possibilities of where we should go.
01:00:25
You'll hear more about how we can get your help for the real estate search committee. And some of you have backgrounds in mortgage companies or real estate or Scott Goddard know certain things to go try to find a place for the church.
01:00:38
Remember several years ago, we tried to buy the church. We made an offer to the old bowling alley in West Boylston. What was the name of that place now?
01:00:46
Pardon me? Checkerboard, that's right. So that would have been kind of the Friday night bowling youth ministry that would have went well.
01:00:53
So you never know. It will be cheaper to buy a building like a Kmart or a
01:00:58
Walmart or that old price chopper in West Boylston and then redo it to a sanctuary than it will be to buy a brand new piece of land and then put the new building on, even if we do one of those kind of tent steel structures that Ron was talking about that many churches do use.
01:01:12
And so right now we don't have the money to buy something unless we were to get the 1 .3 million on this.
01:01:18
I believe we owe about 180 ,000 on this church. So let's say the 180 ,000 and the 155 are just a push.
01:01:25
So basically we're out of debt once we get the check from Governor Romney. I think he should call
01:01:30
Tom Menino and talk about giving away money to Muslims and stuff like that and property. Maybe we could get our money faster, but that's another story for another time.
01:01:39
That's Psalm 94 like I read this morning. Why do the wicked prosper? All right, does anyone have a burning theological question?
01:01:51
Notice I did not say a burning in the bosom like the Mormon missionaries at your door might say.
01:01:56
But does anyone have a burning theological question that you would love to ask before we are dismissed?
01:02:04
You came tonight, you're ready with a theological question. It's unnerving you, it's making you anxious, it's making you despondent, and you want to know the answer.
01:02:15
Does anybody have a question? Be anxious for nothing. Again, this is a rare event tonight because we think the church should have
01:02:26
Bible teaching. I wanted to give you an overview of church growth things tonight, but we just wanted to let you know as a congregation, here's what we're thinking.
01:02:34
I want to say that if you have a question, a concern, a comment, you'd like to meet with the elders, a particular pastor, we want you to know that you can come up to us anytime, a day or night, and you can ask questions.
01:02:46
Well, day or night, that's figurative. Three days and three nights, it wasn't three 72 -hours day, but we want you to know we're available.
01:02:55
I don't think Louis, Dave, or Steve, or I walk around like you can never talk to us, or if you say something to us, we shut you up with Hebrews 13, 17, obey your elders and leaders, and we don't want to be that way.
01:03:09
Sometimes we're busy on Sundays, and so you might just have to say, well, they're talking to visitors, I'll have to wait my turn, but on Tuesdays, call us, we'll talk with you, we'll pray with you.
01:03:20
I'm still surprised that in nine years, I've never received a phone call from someone who is struggling spiritually, and said, according to James chapter five,
01:03:30
I'm struggling spiritually so much so that the elders, would you please come over and pray for me and pray with me, because it is
01:03:38
God's ordained way to have my faith jump -started or reignited by having the elders come over for those who are spiritually sick.
01:03:47
We are here to serve you and to do that, and all four of us will come over to your home to minister to you at James chapter five, but it is beholden to you to say,
01:03:56
I need to call them, because you are to call the elders of the church for things like that. We want to serve you, it is our job to shepherd, it is our privilege to teach you the word and try to live out what we believe, and so you can ask us anything at any time, you wanna ask us a doctrinal question, it's okay to ask, even if we disagree, we would tell you, well, we disagree, but we love you anyway, and so that's the kind of climate that we want to have, and if you think we're standoffish or we're put -offish, then please come and tell us, because we don't want to be that way at all.
01:04:29
Okay, last opportunity for the Burning Theological question. John Cristoforo, is that a hand?
01:04:40
All right, yes. Okay, here goes Tom, all right. You know what
01:04:53
I'll do, Ron, is I'll repeat the question when Tom Bertrand finishes. Okay, good question, the question that Steve Cooley is now going to answer is basically this.
01:05:20
He met a Reformed Presbyterian who says that he believes in the regulative principle, and generally the regulative principle would be described as a church body only doing what the
01:05:31
Bible subscribes for them to do, only what, let me rephrase that, it would, we will only do what the
01:05:40
Bible says on Sunday morning, and we don't do anything extra. Lutherans would say, well, the
01:05:46
Bible didn't say thou shall not have drama, so we could have drama. Presbyterians who subscribe to the regulative principles, and there's different degrees, of course, would say when the
01:05:54
Bible says to pray and to sing and to preach and do scripture reading, we will only do those things.
01:06:00
So Tom's question was, what about this man who was in a Reformed Presbyterian church who says the Bible only says to sing psalms, is in fact psalm singing the only appropriate congregational singing, and number two, does
01:06:13
BBC subscribe to the regulative principle? Yeah, that would be it. Well, to a certain extent,
01:06:24
I think we do subscribe to the regulative principle, I think you'd have a hard time disputing the reading of scripture, praying, singing as a congregation, having the word taught, but it was several weeks ago where I taught on Colossians 3, 16, and it says,
01:06:48
Paul writes, let the word of Christ richly dwell within you with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
01:07:01
And I think Paul easily could have stopped it, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, if that's all we were supposed to do.
01:07:15
So I don't really see that as being the issue, I do think, and I think it's critical and something that we strive for here is that the songs should be biblical, they should be
01:07:26
God honoring, and that sort of thing, but there are probably a good number of things that we do that aren't necessarily in the
01:07:36
Bible, I don't think you could find, for example, ushers in the Bible, I think there are a number,
01:07:44
I don't know if it says that they met and sat down in chairs, or that they had hymnal, I mean, in other words, you can take it to ridiculous extremes, and so what we have is a,
01:07:58
I would say we have a Baptistic tradition that is pretty regulative, pretty normative in terms of our adherence to what the
01:08:07
New Testament says, if somebody came to us and said, you know what, you can't find that anywhere in the New Testament, and not only that,
01:08:13
I don't think it's very God honoring, I think that would be a legitimate point, I don't really think, yeah,
01:08:20
I don't really think we do much that you could find and say that we don't, that we don't do this, so.
01:08:30
Dave, did you want to add? Well, Mike and I had talked about this, and I had heard about this from,
01:08:39
I think one of the gentlemen that had come, who was the gentleman who came and taught about the Old Testament? Dr.
01:08:45
Baird. Baird? Or Block. One of those, he talked about, you remember he talked about the new song, and we sing a new song unto the
01:08:52
Lord, and basically, because God has blessed us in a way that, for us personally, it affected our souls and uplifted us, and we are just so thankful to the
01:09:08
Lord that we, at that point, can praise him and give thanks for that, and why not, at times, and what people are doing today is to take out a pen and write and put lyrics on page that are biblical and that are
01:09:25
God -honoring and Christ -focused and give glory to the Lord in its proper, not to be, you know, when you have folks that ask that type of question about the regulatory principle and, you know, you can only do it this way, well, you know, the pendulum can swing so many different ways, and isn't it, at times, when it does that, it can swing toward a legalistic viewpoint in that if this is the measure of spirituality, if you do it our way, and it can't be done any other way, but that then does not, of course, they can't stand upon that biblically, like Steve answered, nor does it allow for the
01:10:07
Holy Spirit to be the one that is gonna lead in the worship or lead us in worship to do that which is biblical and our boundaries of the scripture, but it's okay to praise
01:10:19
God with new words and with new tunes, as long as we are giving honor to the Lord.
01:10:27
Tom, you can study that all you like because there is a big schism in different churches, sing psalms alone, do you use any kind of instruments besides the voice?
01:10:36
And the list goes on and on and on. What I loved about going to India is I could be transported to another culture in another part of the world and see how born -again
01:10:45
Christians worshiped, and that was very refreshing for me because they didn't do it exactly how
01:10:51
I would, but the songs were God honoring, the preaching was from the text, and the other things that they did that were different,
01:10:58
I just assumed that was a different culture and a different manifestation of the local church, and so what we wanna do is, even if we have preferences of songs that we don't like that song, or if we don't like it because it's not biblical, you should talk to us and we should not sing that song anymore, but if you just don't like the,
01:11:15
I'll fly away because you just don't like it because it reminds you of circus music or something, well, then we sing it anyway because the church is not about our preference, the church is for the body together.
01:11:26
I was at a church where if they sang out of the Trinity hymnal, the Presbyterian Reformed hymnal, there's a
01:11:33
Baptistic version as well, the blue one, that if they sang out of that hymnal and not a psalm, that those people would not stand up to sing the hardcore
01:11:41
Reformed songs out of the Trinity hymnal because it wasn't a psalm, so they would sit down in protest because it wasn't a psalm, and so that to me is much more grievous to the
01:11:54
Spirit of God in grieving Him than someone saying, I don't personally prefer to sing songs from the
01:12:01
Trinity hymnal, but they are biblical songs and I will honor God and sing anyway, and if you can't do that, then you should not walk in the door.
01:12:09
Yes, Ron. Could I add to that response? I'll make it quick. Sure. I've had discussions in the past about this, and I've said the
01:12:18
Jews used to sing the psalms, and these Presbyterians, or whoever wants to follow that along, they sing the psalms in a paraphrase, so if they want to be like the
01:12:30
Jews and be biblical, they have to chant them, sing from the
01:12:37
Bible and chant them. In Hebrew. Yeah, in Hebrew, that's correct.
01:12:42
Well, I want to make sure, I would like to sing more psalms at the church. That would be true, but what the psalms show latently would be the work in person of Christ.
01:12:53
There are some messianic psalms, yes, Psalm 22 and Psalm 2 and Psalm 110 and others, but we don't really see the substitutionary atonement blatantly, we just see it latently.
01:13:05
We don't see it just right there, and so I think it behooves the church to sing songs about the death, burial, and resurrection of our
01:13:13
Savior as He died in our place on our behalf, not just singing the psalms that would look toward that.
01:13:20
You can see songs in the Bible, in Revelation chapter five, worthy is the lamb that was slain.
01:13:27
Can you imagine being in a church where you are not allowed to sing that because it is not in the Psalter? There are a variety of issues, and worship wars are big.
01:13:35
My suggestion to you as a congregation would be this. You may prefer different songs on Sunday than we pick, but if you're generally in agreement with the church and you're a member, that you should just go along with what we do, and if you prefer striper songs, then get in your car on the way home and rock out, but this is not a church where we can appeal to everyone's preferences.
01:13:57
We have younger people who need to learn about the hymns. We have older people that should be able to appreciate a song like we sang today, the first praise song.
01:14:07
What was it? No Greater Portrait. There are songs that we can learn. You say, well, I don't really like the tune or this or that.
01:14:14
We don't pick songs that you might hate them, but we don't pick songs asking this question. I hope the congregation likes them.
01:14:21
We pick them saying that they're God honoring, and they speak of his work in a biblical way that we might sing unto him and be reminded that way.
01:14:29
So that's what we do. If you prefer different music, you say, I come for the preaching, not for the music. I think that's fine.
01:14:36
If you say, we don't like the worship at BBC, you are betrayed in your own theology because worship is giving.
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I guess you don't like how much you give. Worship is preaching. You must not like the preaching, et cetera, et cetera.
01:14:48
We don't all prefer the same songs. That's why I have a CD player. And so we don't sing all the songs that I prefer here.
01:14:55
It's because it's not Mike's Bible Church. In Mike'sville, in Mike's Bible Church, we'd sing certain kinds of songs that you will never gonna be able to know.
01:15:04
I'm not gonna tell you what I prefer because it's not about my preferences. It's about the body of Christ and for the good of the congregation.
01:15:12
Okay, we get, you know, once we get into music, here we go. All right, Charlie, that's right.
01:15:23
Mike. Oh, it's Charlie. It's decreased by over half, hasn't it?
01:16:51
In the last five to seven years. All right,
01:17:29
Ron, did you wanna say something? I see your hand pop up there again. Okay, good. Well, since we're talking about songs and since we're talking about non -psalms, there's a good little tune that we like to sing at communion.
01:17:41
I think it's 513, your hymnals. Let's just stand and sing that acapella, 513. Oh, how he loves you and me.
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And that's really the focus when we sing. I sometimes don't love the Lord very well, but I know he loves me.
01:17:53
And the way I know he loves me is because of the cross. I could never question his love because of the cross.
01:17:59
And so, oh, how he loves you and me. Is it 513? Yep. Congregation, you're singing acapella very well these days.
01:18:06
And so I wanna continue to encourage you on Sunday mornings when we have the last stanza acapella.